Saving lives from suicide

WHEN Samantha Harrison’s father committed suicide four years ago, she strugged not only to cope with her grief but also to find someone who could empathise with her.

There was a gaping hole in support services on the Coast. So Samantha, then 18, her sister Cassie, 16, and brother William, 14, started what has become an Australian first in helping young people deal with the suicide of a loved one.

The Head High program has proved so successful it won the National Youth Suicide Prevention Award in 2006.

“At the peak of everything happening for me, I went to a counsellor and he didn’t understand what I was going through at all,” said Samantha, 22, from Sippy Downs.

“He had never experienced death and was still living at home with both of his parents. I just didn’t feel that he understood and he couldn’t give me any comfort or the help I needed at that time.

“We started the group more for ourselves than anything to start with, because there was nothing specific for young people that covered that topic locally.” Samantha said she and her family considered family counsell ing, but dismissed the idea because of self-imposed pressure to be less than honest.

“We knew we couldn’t go to counselling with Mum there because we didn’t want to be upset in front of her and upset her even more,” Samantha said.

“We needed a place where we could go and just be kids.”

The Head High group was developed with the help of the Sunshine Coast Suicide Prevention Network and is now overseen by Najidah, a local organisation that supports victims of abuse and works to develop safer communities.

“We don’t all just sit around and talk about how bad we are feeling,” Samantha, a legal secretary, said.

“We know we are all feeling sad. We do art and music therapy. It’s just about being around other kids who understand.

“My sister and I, when we went back to school after Dad died, heard all these girls talking about what they were going to do on the weekend and what they were wearing. It was so irrelevant for us.

“That sort of stuff used to mean a lot to us before, but it didn’t afterwards.

“When your life has been tipped upside down like that, you change as a person. You start to ask all sorts of questions and look back and see if there were signs. “My dad’s dog died and that was when he started paying all his bills and calling each of us kids.

“We just thought he was being really nice that day. “And then you go back further in your mind and wonder if it’s because of something you did or didn’t do.

“In the end you just have to keep telling yourself there are too many what ifs and that it was their choice. But there is huge guilt that it was somehow your fault.”

Najidah director Chris Turner believes the importance of a group such as Head High cannot be underestimated.

“One of the risk factors in suicide is being subjected to the suicide or attempted suicide of a family member or friend,” he said.

“People who are bereaved from suicide may become at risk at that moment. It is called suicide contagion. “They need support from people who understand them and what they are going through.

“People are now saying, look at how many suicides this group would have prevented.

“It is a group founded by young people for young people, and in a time when people are complaining that young people don’t take responsibility for themselves, here is a group demonstrating that this is not necessarily true.”

Sunshine Coast Suicide Prevention Network president Jean-Claude Boulenaz said Head High filled a gap for young people who realised their issues were slightly different to those faced by adults bereaved by suicide.

“It is serving a great need in the community,” he said.

“Guilt is an issue across the board with suicide and it needs to be looked at with sensitivity,” he said. Head High, which meets once a month, can be contacted through www.head high.org.au or 5479 0394.